


Steel from the Crucible

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Friendship, Gen, Mycroft Holmes and Feelings, Partnership, Sherlock Holmes and Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-04
Updated: 2014-06-04
Packaged: 2018-02-03 09:16:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1739324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This one is an attempt to blend my usual talking heads with a bit of an adventure, and a "we've known each other forever, but this is when we become friends" story for Lestrade and Mycroft. It could be pre-slash. It could be pre-BFF. Whatever, it's about why we decide to stand for people, and how we stand for them, and how we become a team, and how it can matter without anyone ever quite saying so. Because so often the most important things are largely unsaid, without being unrecognized.</p><p>If you get the whim-whams thinking about being trapped in a fire? Yeah. Um...not the story for you. Right? Right. And insofar as i know, only madmen and madwomen like Sherlock and Anthea think the way to install extra access into a  house on fire is to, well... No. I won't give it away. But their approach is not, so far as I know, recommended. By anyone. Anywhere. Just in case you wondered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Steel from the Crucible

“You can’t do this, Mike.”

Mycroft rolled his eyes, even as he ripped his silk tie open and drenched it with water from a water bottle.

“You’re the British Government,” Sherlock snarled. “You can’t go and waste yourself on a hopeless gamble for just one man.”

“I’ve been planning for the day of my demise for years,” Mycroft snapped. “I’ve already given Anthea the heads-up. Believe me, England will not fall.”

 “No, Mike. I am not letting you go in alone on something you say is a suicide run.”

“What are you going to do, then, Sherlock?” Mycroft, asked, then wrapped the silk fabric and the soft polyester lining over his nose and mouth, tying the improvised smoke-mask at the nape of his neck.

“Go with you, of course,” Sherlock growled. “I’m not letting you gamble your life like a total idiot without me there to get you out of trouble.”

Mycroft gave him the most big-brother of big-brother looks. “Sherlock, you are such an ass.” He sighed. “That’s what I thought you were going to say, but I did hope for just one final glimpse of intelligence from you.”

 “If anyone goes after Lestrade it should be me,” Sherlock snapped. “I’m the one who got him in there. I’m his friend. You’re just upper management.”

“As you say,” Mycroft considered his suit. “I think I’m better off wearing the suit. More protection, such as it is.”

“You’re not listening.”

“No, no, I am—do go on.”

“I’m going in with you.”

The next thing Sherlock knew he was face down on the ground with his larger, heavier brother kneeling on him, tying his wrists with his own scarf. It was so seldom Mycroft ever forced him to remember his older brother was trained…

“You hardly know him,” Sherlock said. “You’re going to die for a man you barely even know.”

“All the better reason,” Mycroft said. “This is likely to be my last chance to get to know him.” Then he walked away, brogues steady, never hesitating, and Sherlock heard the backdoor entrance into the inferno that had once been a renovated row of Victorian flats open, and close—a subtle, lethal click and slam barely audible over the sirens and the roar of the fire.

When Sherlock finally worked himself free, he found his mobile phone gone—and Mycroft’s gold ring in his pocket in its place.

oOo

“Sherlock, for fuck’s sake, don’t be maudlin,” Lestrade snarled, snapping the phone on after the fifth attempt to reach him. “I’ve got better things to do than argue with you about who should have stayed in here.”

“Oh, good, Lestrade. Glad you picked up. This is Mycroft Holmes. How are you doing?”

“Mycroft? What the hell are you doing with Sherlock’s…no. Never mind.” Lestrade scowled and dodged a jet of fire breaking through the drywall of the ground story central corridor of the second terraced house of the set. “Kind of busy right now. Um—in a bit of a hot situation.”

“Yes,” Holmes said, voice dry. “precisely. I’m working my way to you from the third townhouse. If I’m not mistaken there’s a shared laundry room at the north end of your building that will allow you through to this one. We can’t get out the way I came in—the fire’s already spread through the old lathework. Damned contractors should have pulled it, but you know how it is—cutting corners. But I’m fairly sure we can work our way over one more, then up and across. The fire’s moving to the north, and they’re doing what they can to soak down the northern buildings before the fire reaches them. It looks like our best chance will be that direction, and up on the roof where they can retrieve us.”

Lestrade shook his head, confounded. “Us?”

“Well, we were hardly going to leave you in there on your own, now, were we?” Holmes’ voice was acerbic.

“Actually, that was kind of the idea,” Lestrade growled.

“In that case I’ll have to make sure you’re assigned a capable therapist to deal with those suicidal tendencies once we’re out,” Holmes said. “Now, are you able to find the kitchen?”

“Yeah, yeah. Got it.”

“Good. There’s a swinging door just past the refrigerator. Go through and it will channel you through a pantry to the door into the laundry room.”

“Excuse me, but how the bloody hell do you know all that?”

“Building plans. Had my PA scour them up, scan them, and send them over. Check your email—you should have a copy, too.”

“Bugger.” Lestrade shook his head, but took the MI6 agent at his word. “Ok, found the hatch door, found the pantry, found the laundry.”

“There in a moment,” Holmes said, sounding slightly tense. “You might wish to check over the clothes washer. I believe there should be a hatch up to the same room a floor up.”

“Yeah, I think so. Screwed shut, but looks like a trap up in the ceiling.”

“Good.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“Fire worked its way inward faster than I expected. We’re going to have to go to the roof, then over, if we hope to escape.”

“How fast is it moving?”

“Quite.”

Lestrade sighed. “Shouldn’t have come. Told Sherlock…”

“Well, now you know better. Never tell Sherlock. No matter what your primary goal, don’t tell Sherlock. He’ll muck you up somehow. Now, if you’d be so kind as to look for something to unscrew that trap? Only I think we’re running short of time, you see.”

Lestrade, staring up at the square-framed entry capped by a wood cover, flinched, as a crash came from the building beyond.

“Rather definitely short of time,” Holmes amended; then said, apologetically, “If you can get it open, you might want to start up without me.”

oOo

“Sherlock, where have you been?” John shouted, as the younger man rushed toward him through the steam and smoke. “Mary’s started a triage station to make things easier for the paramedics when they get here. We need stretcher carriers.” He scowled. “You’re all mud. Don’t tell me you’ve been gathering clues now. Save it for later.”

“Mycroft’s gone in,” Sherlock snarled.

John froze, and stared at him. “What?”

“You heard me, my damned brother has gone in.”

“Why?”

“Lestrade—Mycroft has apparently run mad and decided to save Lestrade.”

John frowned, then gave himself a shake, looking both sober and afraid. “I don’t think he’s going to make it.”

“Neither does he,” Sherlock said, eyes as incendiary as the bombs that had started the fire in the terrace. “I need your phone.”

“Why? I’m using it to contact the A&Es to be ready for us.”

“Give. Me. Your. Phone. Mycroft took mine, and I can’t contact him without.”

“Why did he take your phone?”

“To contact Lestrade.”

“He doesn’t have the number on his?”

“He probably didn’t expect Lestrade to answer ‘unknown’ in the middle of an inferno.”

“I’m surprised he answered you.”

“Mycroft is nothing if not persistent,” Sherlock grumbled. He glanced at his muddied clothing, and added bitterly, “And he plays dirty.”

John was just beginning to get his head around the situation. Until then the work setting up the triage and preparing the hospital A&Es for incoming burn victims had kept his mind off the bombing and its aftermath. Now…

“I’m sorry, Sherlock,” he said, grim. “I’m…” He glanced at the burning buildings, over half the terrace now showing signs of flame. The building Lestrade had been in was by now engulfed in flames. “I…they were good men.”

And, he wondered, how the hell is Sherlock Holmes going to cope with the death of both his friend and his brother? John didn’t see how anyone was getting alive out of the refurbished development at this point. The flames were spreading fast, and the buildings were old, and had been far less well-built to begin with than they looked. Much of the interior was likely to be lathe, ready to go up like well-aged tinder.

“Give me your phone,” Sherlock said. “I need your phone, John. Now.”

Feeling a mix of horror and sympathy, John pulled the phone out of the pocket of his cardigan weskit, and watched as Sherlock hit speed dial, muttering “Pick up, Lestrade. Pick up, pick up, pick up.”

John was fairly sure Lestrade would be dead by now—of inhalation, of heat prostration, of direct burns. He’d been trapped behind a fallen wall, the last John had seen him, and the flames had been moving fast.

“Pick up, pick up, pick up, Scotland Yard, damn you.” The litany sounded panicked—unlike Sherlock, but then Sherlock seldom faced a tragedy so personal to him.

“Maybe you’d better let me,” John said, reaching to take the phone back. But before he could…

“Sherlock,” growled Lestrade, “for the love of God, stop calling me. I’m busy.”

“Too busy to accept some help?”

“Already got it,” Lestrade said, sounding harried, then shouted, “Jesus, Mycroft, who the fuck do you think you are? Sweeney Todd?”

And, to John’s great surprise, a very proper, very fierce voice responded in the background, “That would be Mrs. Lovatt. Now back up or I’ll take your arm off with the cleaver.”

oOo

Lestrade was standing on the washing machine clawing at the frame of the trap door when Mycroft came crashing through the door from the next house, looking slightly scorched and more than slightly harried. He was grubby and smudged, a loop of vivid silk hung around his neck—apparently an improvised smoke mask he pulled up when the smoke was too thick—and he looked up at the frame above with annoyed dismay.

“Damn. Not open?”

“Obvious,” Lestrade growled…then swayed back as the other man shot up to join him with a quick hand on the machine and a limber bounce. He glared at the wood frame as though he hoped he could intimidate it, then scowled. “Back in a moment,” he said, then skipped back down lightly, for all the world as though he were Peter Pan or Robin Hood or someone else similarly agile and given to bounding about…which was all quite surreal considering the spritely, agile bounder was six-two and clad in a smoke soiled, singed three piece suit in a sand-pale wool-silk blend. Then Mycroft was out the door—and Lestrade’s phone was ringing.

He pulled it out. John…

He swore. He’d thought John at least knew better. As far as Lestrade was concerned, the odds were still that he was going to die, here, and last-hour deathbed scenes were bad enough without holding them by mobile in mid-conflagration. He killed the call, only to have it start again. The screen said it was Sherlock…oh, right, Mycroft had Sherlock’s phone.

So Sherlock had John’s…and now the phone was buzzing with calls from both. He thumbed off the call from Sherlock, and took the one from Mycroft. “I got better things to do than answer phones, sunshine.”

“Dry wall, wood, or plaster?”

“What?”

“The hatch cover: is the main panel made of drywall, wood, or plaster?”

Lestrade scowled and reached up. “Um—I think drywall. It feels wrong to be wood. Why?”

“The fire’s spread to the kitchen. I won’t be able to make it back here. Need to pick the right tools.” Then Mycroft hung up on him.

Lestrade poked the framed cover. He thought it gave a bit, but he wasn’t sure. He was sure, however, that the smoke piling up against the ceiling was getting too thick to let him breathe. His head felt thick and achy, his chest hurt, and his eyes burned. He sat, feet dangling off the edge of the washer like a child sitting on a pier.

This had, he thought, been a bad idea.

No, he corrected himself, it had been a good idea. He frowned. The right idea—he’d got Mary Watson and the baby and John and Sherlock out. So the wall had fallen after that—it had been a calculated risk, and one he’d been willing to take.

He closed his eyes. He didn’t want to die, but, God, it felt good—this once, just this once he knew, without any mystery and doubt, that he’d made the right choice, and saved the right lives. There was a priority stack: women with babies, yeah. Them first because what’s the point if you don’t save the babies and their mums? And then the da—John had been arguing, but then, yeah, John. He’d grabbed the little tosser by the collar and shoved him through the window and lowered him down so he could drop safe to the ground, with Sherlock acting as anchor, holding onto Lestrade’s belt. And then, before Sherlock fucking Holmes could argue, he’d slipped the cuffs on the lanky prat, and heaved him up and over the edge and down to where John and Mary were waiting to catch him. And he’d thrown down the keys, because as he’d told Sherlock as he shoved him through the window, after the babs and their mums and dads, you saved the national treasures, no matter what complete dickheads they might be.

And then the wall came down and the beams from above crashed in and the window was covered as though someone had pulled a drape of fire over it, and he’d retreated, and begun the slow trek up the line of terraced buildings, because he didn’t really want to die if he could help it.

He just didn’t think he could help it.

And now, he thought, he was here alone—no. Not alone. Here with the biggest damned national treasure of all—the British bloody Government had screwed up the priority stack, and tossed himself into the fire with him, and now they had to get out or he’d be the proximate cause of the greatest catastrophe since the Blitz. Hell, for all he knew they’d make poor Sherlock try to fill in for his brother, and by the end of the year England would fall.

His phone kept ringing; he answered.

“Sherlock, for the love of God, stop calling me. I’m busy.”

“Too busy to accept some help?”

The door into the southern house crashed inward, and Lestrade looked up.

Mycroft Holmes, with knives and pointy things bristling from his belt, wielding the biggest meat cleaver Lestrade had ever seen, with a crazed look of determination in his eyes.

“Already got it,” Lestrade said. He blinked at Mycroft, and considered the overall look.  “Jesus, Mycroft, who the fuck do you think you are? Sweeney Todd?”

 “That would be Mrs. Lovatt. Now back up or I’ll take your arm off with the cleaver.”

Lestrade shimmied to the side of the washing machine, then shimmied further in defensive dismay as Mycroft did the vaulting thing again, palm to the top and then feet up and then standing. He eyed the frame, and with one insane roundhouse blow drove the edge of the cleaver through the framed cover. He grinned like a madman—for all the world like his brother on a tear—then wrenched the cleaver out and rammed it home again. Then he pulled it loose one more time and punched his fist through the gaping hole he’d made, grabbing inside and pulling with all the fourteen stone or so he could claim. The frame was wrenched free with a mighty groaning of screws and cracking of wood and sprinking of dust and grit.

“Sonofabitch,” Lestrade said, looking up. “Sonofabitch, Mycroft!”

“Get up; I’ll give you a boost through, then you help pull me up,” Mycroft said, tucking the cleaver firmly in with the rest of his arsenal.

“Yeah, sure, lemme get off the phone with Sherlock,” Lestrade said.

“Oh!” Mycroft said, “Is that Baby Brother?” He snatched the iPhone out of Lestrade’s hand, and before Sherlock could start in on him, said, “Shut up, Sherlock, and listen. We’re in the third house up, in the laundry room, and we’re about to transit up a floor through the hatch that once held the former sewer line. It may take a few moments—I think we’ve got to shove over a washer before we can get through. But then we’re going to be on the first floor, heading north and up. We’re aiming for the rooftop or the highest and most northernmost access out we can find. Get Anthea to initiate GPS tracking on your phone.” He paused and then said, “Of course, you silly boy. My phone’s buggered seven ways to Sunday—can’t be tracked by GPS even by God himself. You think I want to advertise my position to one and all? Tell Anthea I’ve got your phone and Lestrade’s. If she can’t reach or track one, she should try for another. Right. Look, brother-mine, we’ve got to go: it’s getting a bit like the smoking room at the Diogenes in here, and if we’re going to have the chance to die of cancer as a result of breathing it, we’ve got to be on our way. Ta. Laters.” He clicked the phone, handed it back to Lestrade, and offered his hand. “Hope you’re feeling strong and manly, Lestrade. Unless I have missed my guess, the twin of this washer is sitting directly overhead, and we’re going to have to tip it over before we can climb through. Ready?” He hooked a finger into the silk around his neck, and pulled up his improvised mask, looking for all the world like a bandit on the Highway, all knives and romance and mayhem.

Lestrade looked at Mycroft, feeling he was in a hallucination. He smiled. “You know, I wasn’t expecting God to look like a posh twat in a suit with a cutlery shop strapped to his trou—but damned if I don’t think I must have been wrong.”

He accepted the hand up, and smiled as Mycroft murmured, “It’s an easy mistake to make, Inspector…others have made it previously. Consider yourself absolved—now, let me give you a knee up…”

oOo

It was a strange little war room, set up at the edge of the emergency zone around the cordoned-off street. First by the terraced houses were the fire fighters, in tandem with the bomb squad worried about further incendiaries. Then the paramedics, and Mary Watson’s little triage team, now being run by two Red Cross nurses and a doctor from down the road who’d just arrived home from two shifts in the A&E but who went right to work regardless. Then, far to the side, were Sherlock and John and Mary and Anthea, looking sleek and calm, until you looked into her eyes and saw an inferno of rage and fear, and then two tacticians from Mycroft’s team and three techs, all with the look in their eyes that said as far as they were concerned England’s most vital national resource was in harm’s way on a level they didn’t rightly know how to talk about.

“Oh, stop wittering,” Sherlock growled at Anthea. “You’ve got a track on him. And surely you’ve got plans in place. It’s not like you’re losing an irreplaceable asset—England has more geniuses. I only have one…” He stopped, and didn’t say more.

“One brother?” John said, softly.

“One Mycroft,” Sherlock said, grudgingly. “Bilious, interfering, sanctimonious git though he may be.”

“Call him,” Anthea said, ignoring all the by-play. “He’s got to know the fire’s traveling through the attics. He’s going to be cut off soon. It looks like he’s going to be pinned down by branching spread two houses down—he’s not going to make it to a clear exit point before then. The firefighters say they need him to work his way to the back of the house. They’ve brought in a cherry picker, and are going to try to make it up to get them from the back nursery overlooking the garden.”

“Will do,” Mary said, snatching the phone out of Sherlock’s numb fingers. In second she was talking to Mycroft. “Yes. Yes—it’s looping back. Traveling through the spaces between the walls, and leapfrogging up in the attics, where there are old connecting passages for workmen and plumbing. No—they’re going to get you out. Just make it to the nursery, two houses on, and back. Right.”

“What are their odds? Really?” Sherlock met Anthea’s eyes, fierce and frightened.

“Bad.” She ran her fingers through dark hair. She grabbed a pencil, twisted her hair into a rope, coiled it, and pinned it in place, stabbing the pencil point-first and giving a little twist to maintain the tension and hold it all in place. The whole process gave her an excuse to look away from Sherlock’s wild eyes. “Did he know?” she asked, softly. “Did he know he wasn’t likely to make it out?”

“Yes,” Sherlock growled.

She lowered her head.

“He said there were plans in place,” Sherlock snapped. “He _said_ you’re all ready for this.”

She shrugged. “There are contingency plans. Business will continue, as usual.” Her mouth twisted, and she said, then, “Just…without _him_.” She looked miserably at the blazing mess of the terrace, with the water hoses shooting high, fountaining jets, and the sooty tidal wave of filthy water pouring down the street. “Didn’t he know we’d rather…we’d rather he stayed?”

Sherlock, who had more than once suggested to his brother that he and the world might be better off short one Holmes, and that Sherlock was not the Holmes in question, looked away. “He was set on it. I don’t know why.” He studied the buildings. “If my analysis of the building plans is accurate, there’s a high chance they won’t be able to gain access to the nursery, but will be pinned in the WC several yards short of the mark. If the cherry picker is to reach them, access to the outside will have to be expanded.”

“In the middle of a fire,” John said, frowning. “Hard going on the guy who has to go up there with a saw and hack a new door.”

“I wasn’t thinking of a saw, John,” Sherlock said with a toothy grin, all deadly anger invested in a problem he could deal with.

“Then what?” John asked.

Mary grinned, too. “Oh, I see what you’re thinking of, Sherlock. Bad boy. John, think about it. You’re a military man…”

John thought, then shook his head in dismay. “Sonofabitch. You want to blast a hole in the wall with a mortar.”

“It does rather cut down on the need for carpentry skills, doesn’t it?” Sherlock said. He turned to Anthea. “Make arrangements. I’m sure you and your team can refine on the basic idea. But let Mycroft know we’re planning on getting him out from the WC if he can’t make it to the nursery, and let him know how. He’s not going to want to be sitting on the loo when we open the bathroom window.”

oOo

“Why did you do it?” Lestrade said, as they worked their way belly-down along the central corridor of the upper flat. “Death trap. Rotten odds. You know me, but not that well. Colleague, and not a particularly critical one. And it’s not like it’s not a good death—line of duty. Saved lives. Why did you come in after me, with the kind of odds we’re looking at?”

“Do you always choose to hold philosophical conversations during crises?” Mcyroft grumbled.

“Sherlock brings out the hidden philosopher in the best of us,” Lestrade said. “Either that or the hidden psycho-killer rampage. Me, I’ve developed an entire theory of life based on my exposure to Holmeses. The first is to figure that no matter what total berks they look like, they usually have a reason. So. What was yours?”

Mycroft stopped, reaching to pull out his buzzing phone. “What is it, Anthea?”

Lestrade hitched forward, and poked Mycroft in the ankle, indicating he might keep moving in spite of the phone call. The other man nodded, and returned to his slow creep under the pall of heavy smoke. Only when he was done, though, did he manage to pick up full speed.

“We need to get to the cupboard short of the loo,” he said. “They’re going to start punching holes in the house with targeted artillery.”

“What?”

“They’re punching a bloody hole in the wall with a mortar, because access to the nursery windows is looking dicy.”

“A mortar.”

“Shall we say it’s a bit of a blunt weapon, but effective in its own ballistic fashion?”

“Yeah. I’ll say.”

They found the closet, opened the door to provide such shielding from flying debris as they could, and called Anthea to let her know they were in position.

“I’m tired,” Mycroft said, as they huddled together, rammed shoulder to shoulder in the narrow closet.

“What?” Lestrade asked.

“I’m…tired. Tired of having to spend people I admire as pawns. Tired of the cold equations. Tired of the law that says the king can never be sacrified.” He shrugged. “I don’t know you all that well, Lestrade. I trust you. We did a background check that made it obvious you could be trusted. You’re a consummate professional. You’ve been good for Sherlock. But I don’t know you well, nor you me. I’m not really the sort who inspires that kind of exchange of information and…sentiment. But I admire you.”

He stared out over his bandit-mask improvised face mask, ash and soot covering him with grime, blue eyes the only clean thing in all his face, and said, softly, “I don’t know if you’ll understand that. I just…admire you. I admire a man who can put up with Sherlock. I admire a man who, faced with an explosion, does the civilized thing, and saves the women and children, the fathers, the brilliant prats, and then faces his own death with—dignity. You had a phone, but didn’t call out. You didn’t turn it into a show, the way Sherlock would. No last sobbing goodbyes.” He shrugged. “Logic would suggest I let you die. I am supposedly too valuable to risk. I just—am tired. Very tired of logic. I thought maybe just once I’d choose my actions to reflect my sympathies, not just my obligations.”

The phone rang again. A moment later Mycroft said, “We’re on for mortar fire. Duck and cover, Inspector.”

They turned toward each other, forming a chaste and smoky beast with two backs, arms around each other, faces shielded in each other’s shoulders. The explosion, when it came, whoomped through the building, bringing with it a sudden gust of fresh, clean air—and the sound of fire further in being fanned to new life by the air.

“Scarper,” Lestrade shouted, shoving Mycroft past the remains of the covered door. They raced toward daylight, aware that they couldn’t count on running as fast as flame.

oOo

“Flame’s gutting the place,” Anthea said, tense and testy as she studied the back façade of the terrace through field glasses. “Come on, come on, come on, boss, move it.”

The cherry picker swayed by the rough opening blasted into the side of the building. Everyone stared at that gap, waiting.

“There they are,” Mary said, and bounced in place, fists shoved in her pockets. John jigged the baby and frowned, because frowning was John’s default expression for all emotionally stressful situations. Fortunately, as Sherlock had pointed out, John had a vast array of subtle frowns—one for every occasion and sentiment—so his ability to communicate was in no way handicapped.

Even as the two men were spotted in the opening into the house, the flames contained inside broke through the roof, jetting up and spitting sparks into the blue summer sky.

“Go, go, go,” Sherlock muttered. “Go. It won’t remain stable, Mike. Go.”

The operator of the cherry picker swung the basket close and the rider already inside reached out. In the opening Lestrade and Mycroft had what was too obviously an “After You, my Dear Alphonse” moment, clearly bickering over who would abandon ship first.

Sherlock muttered dark and occult phrases under his breath. “Move. I have already put up with both of you idiots playing sacrificial lamb today. Do not repeat yourselves.”

Lestrade shrugged, clapped Mycroft on the shoulder, and stretched out over the space between the loo and the cherry picker. In seconds he’d scrambled aboard. As he did, though, a low, dull roar rose up.

It was like watching a cake collapse. The roofline sagged and fell inward. The entire house seemed to sway, then something inside gave way. Mycroft had grabbed the torn brickwork of the outer wall. He clung, desperately, as the floor dropped under his feet. Then the fireball roared out, and he leaped, hands grabbing out into space to try to catch the lip of the cherry picker.

And then he hung, swinging, Lestrade grabbing both Mycroft’s wrists. Lestrade’s belly was pressed hard into the lip of the basket, but he was there, stable and secure.

“Bring them down,” Sherlock roared—needlessly, as the operator knew his business and was already swinging them out and over, as far from the raging fire as he could.

The group watching raced up the alleyway, crashing along toward the back garden gate, meeting Lestrade and Mycroft as they staggered out, followed by the two men from the cherry picker.

Sherlock came to a complete stop, suddenly scowling like Angry Jove. “Do not do that to me again,” he snarled.

“Which of us,” Mycroft said, with an amused smirk, eyes shining out of the grime and the black soot. His silk tie was a greasy, sweaty, filthy wreck. His suit was a lost cause. He was shedding a slow fall of knives and poultry skewers, and had a massive meat cleaver tucked into his belt…but he looked mad and bad and glorious and, oddly, happy.

“Either,” Sherlock snapped. “Neither of you.” He raised his chin, and scowled. “You’re hogging the spotlight. Desist.”

Lestrade chuckled. “Prima donna. Give it up, Sherlock. You can’t be the hero every time.”

“I’m not a hero. I’m a high-functioning sociopath.”

“Well, so there, then!” Lestrade said, with a cheeky grin. “Problem solved. Psychopathic mayhem—your division. Sacrificial heroism, Mr. Holmes and I will cover it.”

“Mycroft.”

Lestrade looked over at his partner in heroics. “Huh?”

“Mycroft. Or even Mike.”

Sherlock looked scandalized. “You won’t even let _me_ call you Mike.”

Mycroft smirked, then looked at Lestrade. “It was a pleasure being sacrificial with you, Detective Inspector. Let me know if another event of the sort arises.”

Sherlock scowled and went off in a huff.

The two older men shared laughing smiles. Lestrade shook his head, ruefully. “He’s not too bad, really,” he said, comfortingly. “Bit of a prat, but a great man. And he’s finally begun to become a good one, too.”

“I know,” Mycroft said.

“Thanks. Thanks for coming in after me. I wouldn’t have made it without you.”

“No. But—I wouldn’t have made it without you, either.”

“You could have just stayed out.”

“No.” Mycroft gazed at the fire, now dropping the entire row of townhouses in a chain reaction, each tumbling the next as integral support structures gave up. “No. Not this time. This time I got to do the right thing, not the logical thing…and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

They started down the alley, together.

“You’re not a bad sort, Mycroft Holmes,” Lestrade said, kindly.

“You’re not bad yourself,” Mycroft said, and dropped the ruined remains of his tie in the nearest bin, before suggesting they avail themselves of the shower at his place, and dinner at a decent restaurant after to celebrate their mutual survival.

 


End file.
